The Real Deal Miami

At $17.75M, is Apogee condo asking boom-time price?

It sits on the southernmost tip of South Beach. It has a wrap-around, 3,400-square-foot terrace and two air-conditioned parking garages underground that could fit four cars with room to spare.

The asking price for the seven-bedroom condominium with six full and two half baths: $17.75 million. And it could take another $1 million or so to complete the unfinished space. Plus, the condo has competition — in the same building, no less. The penthouse above is going for $18.5 million. That unit has a rooftop pool.

Welcome to Apogee, called South Beach’s most exclusive property, whose residents are said to include the Miami Heat’s Pat Riley. The Real Deal got a tour of the space this week.

“Apogee, in my opinion, has been the number one premier condo building in South Florida,” said Jack McCabe, a real estate consultant with McCabe Research and Consultancy. “It’s the most classy, prestigious building we have and should garner the highest prices.”

Even so, McCabe called the $2,447-per-square-foot asking price for the seven-bedroom condo “eagerly, over optimistic.”

“I think they may be in fantasy land,” he added.

The Related Company built the 67-unit building, finishing it about two years ago. All the units sold, 80 percent of them in all-cash transactions. The re-sale of the three- and four-bedroom units start at around $3 million.

Anyone who’s buying at this level is going to want customize it, said Dora Puig, broker and owner of Puig Werner Real Estate Services, and the listing agent for the $17.75 million spread. That’s the idea seller Andrew Lessman, who founded the vitamin company ProCaps Laboratories, formerly the Winning Combination, had when he purchased two side-by-side units on the 20th floor in June 2008 for about $10 million with the idea of combining them for personal residency. But his plans changed.

So he decided to put the units on the market about eight months ago, Puig said. He had an architect draw up plans to combine the 3,100-square-foot unit with the 4,154-square- foot unit to create a 7,254-square-foot grand condo with a master living area running from one end of the building to the other, overlooking Biscayne Bay. The penthouse is on two floors and is about 1,000 square feet smaller.

“There’s only one 7,300-square-foot apartment on one floor in [a new building in] Miami Beach,” Puig said.

It’s an apartment that includes a two-bedroom guest suite with a kitchenette, overlooking Miami Beach on the northern end, and has its own private elevator entrance. The building’s units have 10-foot-high ceilings, eight-foot-high mahogany doors throughout and views of the Atlantic Ocean, Downtown Miami, Biscayne Bay, Fisher Island and Star Island.

McCabe said it could take a year or two and price reductions for Lessman’s unit to move. But all it takes is one buyer with $50 million to $100 million who gets hooked on the South Beach sex appeal.

In fact, Puig said there have been multiple offers on the combined unit and the units individually, but buyer and seller “didn’t come to a meeting of the minds” in all cases. But things could change soon as Puig said she is in the middle of negotiating a deal for the unit right now.

“It’s a niche market, no doubt,” Puig said. “But it’s a very well qualified niche.”